For long, we (as a partner community) have been asking for longer field lengths. And this time, Microsoft seems to have delivered: about 860 field lengths were changed. Mostly from Text50 to Text100... (Continue reading)

I’m returning back from yet another great Directions US event in Las Vegas this time. At this point – I’m sitting in the lounge in New York – a great opportunity to do a short post about something I didn... (Continue reading)

My intentional plan was to share a small blog about the Fall release of Business Central . Well – it turned out I had more to say than I imagined beforehand ;-).
I would like to focus on one point,... (Continue reading)

You might remember my blog from yesterday … . I didn’t know when it would be released.
Well, it wasn’t available yesterday, but today, I got the comment on my blog from Daniel Göhler that it was available... (Continue reading)

I’m not attending Directions ASIA this year – and it doesn’t really feel good. There is a major release around the corner, and I have to experience it through social media – I hate it! But that’s life... (Continue reading)

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017 – what’s new

During the Directions call today, Kurt Juvyns introduced the upcoming conferences: Directions US and Directions EMEA. By announcing which sessions there are going to be during the conferences .. and the track (or was it called “path”?) “what’s new” he also announced what is actually going to be new in the product.

So, let’s not focus this small blogpost on what is going to be on the agenda at Directions (I strongly recommend you to review the conference websites), but focus on what is actually going to be new in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017. And, as one picture says more than a 1000 words .. :

I don’t want to go too deep into it .. just because I can’t … but I’ll still, let’s try to see what’s coming to us. Microsoft has been focusing on three pillars:

Bringing two worlds together

I guess this is clear: a much deeper Office 365 integration with NAV. I’m thinking of the stuff I talked about in one of my previous posts: a tight integration of NAV and Outlook.

But also: embedded Power BI. How cool is that? I just hope this is going to be easy to implement (didn’t have a look at it just yet…)

Enhancing the core application and platform

In this part, you see they have been working on quite some application improvements in different areas:

Jobs

CRM

Finance

Items

And also the platform has been improved. That can mean a number of things: both technically behind the screens, or things like screen rending on the client (remember the screenshots which I showed here with for example a new way to show lists (more like “bricks”)).

Creating new opportunities

Kind of a general title .. but when you look at what’s behind – that’s amazing. I’m really looking forward to dive into the Cortana Intelligence, but also PowerApps & Flow.

But I think it’s not a secret: Extensions is going to be the *** (pardon my language..)! Whether you like it or not, Microsoft is committed to Extensions, and making Extensions as important as can be in the near future. NAV2017 is another big step in that direction! Let’s say a lot of capabilities were added .. which make creating Extensions a lot more feasible then it was for NAV2016.